Skip to content

Saturday, Sep. 13, 2025

Has the greenhouse effect been falsified?

Sue Bin Park, Skeptical Science
no

The greenhouse effect is basic physics that has been known for nearly 200 years. Without it, the Earth would not be warm enough for life.

Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide act like an insulating blanket. By preventing some outgoing heat from escaping the atmosphere by absorbing and re-emitting it, they keep Earth around 33°C (59°F) warmer than it would be otherwise.

In comparison, the Moon, lacking an atmosphere, swings from 120°C (248°F) in daytime to -130°C (-202°F) at night. Venus’s thick CO2-rich atmosphere always keeps surface temperatures above 450°C (842°F).

Laboratory tests show these gases trap heat at specific wavelengths, and satellites have directly measured those same wavelengths being trapped and reradiated.

It is no coincidence that as human-caused CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere, more energy is being absorbed from the Sun than is being lost back into space, all while surface and air temperatures continue to rise.

See a full discussion of this at Skeptical Science

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Skeptical Science is a non-profit science education organization. Our goal is to remove a roadblock to climate action by building public resilience against climate misinformation. We achieve this by publishing debunking of climate myths as well as providing resources for educators, communicators, scientists, and the general public. Skeptical Science was founded and is led by John Cook, a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Has Arctic sea ice recovered?

Monday, Sep. 8, 2025

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.